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- Title
The Accuracy of Fine Needle Aspiration at Identifying Thyroid Malignancy in Tayside.
- Authors
Allan, Rachael
- Abstract
Thyroid lumps are common with up to 8% of the adult population having a palpable lump and up to 70% having an incidental nodule found on ultrasound. Although most thyroid nodules are benign, a significant number are malignant and therefore need to be investigated thoroughly using fine needle aspiration (FNA) +/- ultrasound. This study aims to compare FNA results to histological findings after excision to ascertain the accuracy of FNA diagnosis in NHS Tayside. Included in the study were all patients who had undergone surgery to remove their thyroid nodule in Tayside between 2003 and 2011 after being investigated using FNA (n=273). 119 patients had benign results on FNA with 16 of these found to be malignant on histology after excision. This gives a false negative rate of 13%. 14 patients had malignant results on FNA with all of these found to be malignant on histology after excision, giving a false positive rate of 0%. All other FNA results were either nondiagnostic or borderline. The sensitivity and specificity of FNA was therefore found to be 100% and 30% respectively. In Tayside, FNA is accurate at predicting malignancy but has a high false negative rate when predicting benign nodules.
- Subjects
TAYSIDE (Scotland); SCOTLAND; THYROID cancer diagnosis; NEEDLE biopsy; ULTRASONIC imaging; DISEASE incidence; MEDICAL statistics
- Publication
Scottish Universities Medical Journal, 2012, Vol 1, Issue 1, p104
- ISSN
2055-6195
- Publication type
Article